Books for the NOC guys...

Fri Apr 2 13:46:22 UTC 2010

On 4/2/2010 08:39, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:48:48 BST, Michael Dillon said:
>>> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
>>
>> In an attempt to wean them off of unmanageable PERL scripts
> 
> There is not, and there never will be, a useful programming language that
> makes it the least bit difficult to write totally abominable creeping-horror
> unmaintainable code in.
> 
> The ability of a programmer to write totally obtuse code is entirely
> orthogonal to the choice of implementation language.  Some people just don't
> have good taste, and will produce train wrecks in any language. Remember that
> it's possible to write Fortran-IV code in any language. :)
> 
> Unless you teach them stuff like "Document the sources and expected types of
> input data", "add useful comments that explain your choice of algorithms rather
> than  "a++; /* Add one to A */", and "If the language supports operator
> overloading, don't be a bozo and abuse it", the code will be unmaintainable.

"Teach them".  Train them.  Have standards.  Enforce them (pay according
to compliance).

What a concept!  We did that using Autocoder and COBOL.

What next?  "Manage" them?  Is that even legal?
-- 
Democracy: Three wolves and a sheep voting on the dinner menu.

Requiescas in pace o email
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio
Eppure si rinfresca

ICBM Targeting Information:  http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs
http://tinyurl.com/7tp8ml